The Côte d’Azur. 1915. In his twilight years, Pierre-Auguste Renoir is tormented by the loss of his wife, the pains of arthritic old age and the terrible news that his son Jean has been wounded in action. But when a young girl miraculously enters his world, the old painter is filled with a new, wholly unexpected energy. Blazing with life, radiantly beautiful, Andrée will become his last model, and the wellspring of a remarkable rejuvenation.

Back at the family home to convalesce, Jean too falls under the spell of the new, redheaded star in the Renoir firmament. In their Mediterranean Eden - and in the face of his father's fierce opposition - he falls in love with this wild, untameable spirit... and as he does so, within weak-willed, battle-shaken Jean, a filmmaker begins to grow. - Cannes Film Festival 2012

Shun Li works in a textile factory in the outskirts of Rome, in order to get her papers and enable her eight-year-old son to come to Italy. She is suddenly transferred to Chioggia, a small city-island in the Venetian lagoon, to work as a bartender in a pub. Bepi, a Slavic fisherman nicknamed ‘the Poet’ by his friends, has been a regular at that little pub for years.

The friendship between Shun Li and Bepi upsets both the Chinese and native communities, who interfere with this new relationship, which appears to place all concerned in a state of fear. A truly poignant and poetic account of the destructive power of prejudice and friendship in a foreign territory. - Cork Film Festival 2012

Didier and Elise’s relationship is stormy and passionate; it’s love at first sight. Didier plays the banjo in a bluegrass band, lives in a caravan in the Belgian countryside and idolises America as the ‘land of the free’. Elise owns her own tattoo parlour. Her body is plastered with images – little mementos of past lovers whose names have been carefully covered up by new tattoos. Before long their two lives are closely intertwined. Elise sings in Didier’s band and they soon have a daughter together, little Maybelle, with whom they move into a lovingly if unconventionally restored country house. This film accompanies Elise and Didier on their rollercoaster ride through life; through days filled with their love of music and their mutual passion.

Based on the stage play by Johan Heldenbergh and Mieke Dobbels, director Felix van Groeningen portrays various episodes in Elise and Didier’s story. The film’s barn-stomping blue grass concert footage and enthralling love story are delightfully reminiscent of the grand old days of American country music. - Berlin Film Festival 2013

In the first full-length feature film shot entirely inside Saudi Arabia, Wadjda tells the story of a 10-year-old girl living in a suburb of Riyadh, the capital. After a fight with her friend Abdullah, Wadjda sees a beautiful green bicycle for sale. She wants the bicycle desperately so that she can beat Abdullah in a race. But Wadjda's mother won't allow it, fearing repercussions from a society that sees bicycles as dangerous to a girl's virtue. So Wadjda decides to try to raise the money herself. A cash prize for a Quran recitation competition at her school leads Wadjda to become a model pious girl as she devotes herself to the memorisation of Quranic verses. The Quran competition isn't going to be easy, especially for a troublemaker like Wadjda, but she is determined to fight for her dreams... with or without society's approval. - Human Rights Watch Film Festival London 2013

Safe House director Daniel Espinosa first grabbed attention with this violent, vice-like thriller based on the bestselling novel by criminal defence attorney Jens Lapidus. Praised for its dynamic storytelling and tangy evocation of a multicultural Sweden, it finds its focus in handsome economics student JW, a man who has dipped his toes in the drug trade and discovered that he is now swimming with sharks. Escaped con Jorge is lining up a massive cocaine deal that will smash the Serbian mafia’s control of the local drug trade. Mafia enforcer Mrado is not about to let that happen and somewhere in the middle there is slick, resourceful JW who works for Jorge’s partners in crime. - Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2013

Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan play a middle-aged, middle-class couple who visit Paris for a long weekend in hopes of rekindling their relationship—or, perhaps, to bring it to an end. Diffident, wistful Nick (Broadbent) and demanding, take-charge Meg (Lindsay Duncan) careen from harmony to disharmony to resignation and back again as they take stock and grapple with love, loss, regret and, disappointment, in their own very English way. When they accept a dinner invitation from Nick’s old friend Morgan (Jeff Goldblum), an American academic superstar with a fancy Parisian address, the film strikes one surprising grace note after another, building to a lyrical ending that is, incidentally, one of the loveliest movie homages (in this case, to Godard’s Band of Outsiders) in years. This magically buoyant, bittersweet comedy drama, starring two of Britain’s national treasures, is a new peak in the ongoing collaboration between screenwriter Hanif Kureishi and director Roger Michell. - New York Film Festival 2013